Wednesday, April 22, 2009

"Quite aside from the wonderful irony of Jane Harman’s transformation from prominent Democratic defender of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping into a civil libertarian par excellence – which has been definitively celebrated by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon – the story of how this leading "national security Democrat" sold out her nation’s security on behalf of a foreign power underscores the all-pervasive and corrupting influence of Israel’s lobby in the U.S. Harman was caught on tape with a "suspected Israeli agent," according to Congressional Quarterly, agreeing to intervene with the U.S. Justice Department and the White House to get the espionage charges against two AIPAC employees reduced. In return, the Israeli agent promised AIPAC would put pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get Harman appointed head of the House intelligence committee. This pressure included havingHaim Saban – whose largesse underwrites the Saban Center at Brookings, as well as a number of Democratic Party organizations – threatening to cut off the funding unless Pelosi caved.......

What’s significant about the Harman case is that all the elements that have given the Israel Lobby such power in Washington – political heft, lots of money, and the exception-making requirements of the "special relationship" – have come together in a kind of Harmanic convergence, if you will, to illustrate why and how the Lobby’s influence is corrupting.

The sooner the public gets this message, the sooner our lawmakers will respond. And the proper response, to start with, is to make AIPAC do what every foreign lobbyist has to do, and that is comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act by registering as an agent of a foreign power. This would put legal restrictions in place that would cut the Lobby down to its proper size and help correct the Israel-centric distortion of American foreign policy, which has been so skewed in the wrong direction for so long chiefly because of domestic political pressures. It’s long past time to cut off that pressure at its source."